Category: Performance Management

By Scott

Listen: If you hear any of these 3 things you/we have a problem

Leading people is hard.  It is even harder when leaders are in a mode of talking more than they listen.  When you lead knowledge workers, remember that when you are doing most of the talking their brain is focused on processing what you tell them and reacting to it versus using their own brain to think what they want to do and what questions they need to have answered.

I always promote more conversations – which means two people in direct contact with each other sharing the burden of talking and listening.

As I coach leaders and teams through the transition of having more purposeful conversations, here are things I hear that alert me that someone is not being honest or they are stuck in a place that will keep great conversations for ever happening unless they make a choice to move forward.

  1. It is someone else’s fault: It might be, and if we are talking about what help you need to get to a different level of performance, identify a target job for yourself, or maybe to find more joy/commitment in your work . . . . does it really matter whose fault it is?  If this becomes the primary focus there is a problem.  If accountability is the ultimate goal, then making fixing the problem the priority will make it easier to have the conversation of – What can we do to make sure this never happens again?
  2. I cannot do ANYTHING until you do your job: Really? I used to do a junior achievement activity around production. Each person had a job to do in assembling an item, and there was always one person who could not work fast enough.  Sometimes, people just stood and watched the person struggle.  In other groups, the people around this individual helped out so that the bottleneck went away.  If you choose to watch or chose to say no to any offers of help, then you are really the problem.
  3. I am too busy to have this conversation: Okay, if you are too busy now when would be a good time? This is a flag for me that something else is going on. Imagine not wanting to have a discussion about what we can do to make your job better, to improve the support I provide you as your leader, or to make career plans for you?  Too busy? Hmmm . . . .

It is messy to start the habit of more conversations with your people.  If you are a leader that has not made a habit of slowing down to listen to what your people need, it will be a hard change.  If people are used to you telling them what to do and not listening to their ideas, or not always explaining your decisions, then it will be hard for them to make the shift to owning things that are hard – like offering their own ideas and fixing their own mistakes.

If you work for someone trying to make a shift in their leadership style and you give one of these responses, then you are effectively saying “I do not support the change you are trying to make and I would like to work towards you staying the same”.  Really?

If you are a leader trying to improve the conversations you have with your people, here are some templates that might help you get started.

 

By Scott

Rule #1: Sleep

A friend who has never read a business book recommended Rework by the founders of 37signals.  It has made my top shelf and there is one message that helped preserve my sanity during the start-up of my business.  When you are tired, sleep.

Seems simple, but in our drive to complete everything and show any customer in the world that comes in contact with us what an amazing performer we are, the bar gets raised to a point that most of them cannot even see or appreciate.  For me, I was so focused on getting it all done that I forgot I was skilled at my craft and that many of these tasks took a third of the time if I was rested.  So since then I have just gone to bed, and here are a few outcomes for those who need data:

  • 0 missed deliverables
  • 0 feedback from clients indicating I was unprepared
  • 0 feedback from anyone that I appear more rested

The benefit was that it also allowed me to hone in on my new rule that when the house shuts down and my spouse goes to bed, I put everything down and go to bed.  A simple rule, but it has made all the difference.  Nobody else will care that you slept, except the people that have to live with you.  Doesn’t that matter?  It should . . .

Holidays is about being present and putting things down that can be handled later.  It should not take a book or a blog to tell us go to sleep, but sometimes these messages need to be spelled out and we need to be in a place to hear them.

My message for you:  Thanks for listening and sharing your stories with me.  I will not bother you until Jan 7, so stay present with the people that matter in your life.

Have a great holiday.

By Scott

You don’t need more data

An email came from the Gallup organization yesterday inviting me to buy a full ranking of my Strengthsfinder results for the bargain price of $89.  It promised my 34 talent themes ranked from strongest to weakest.  For those of you that have never taken it, when you buy Strengthsfinder 2.0 or Now, Discover Your Strengths from Gallup you get a code that will allow you to take an assessment that gives you your top 5 talents.  It is a great assessment.

Great move by Gallup, because the popularity of this assessment has resulted in tens of millions of people taking it.  If 1% get excited about this offer it will be very profitable.

I have personally helped over 500 people understand their Strengthsfinder results, and in every group there is always one person who wants more data – all 34 talent themes ranked.

My standard response has been – “What would you do with more data?”  The answers I hear includes statements like Then I will really know or words like certain, exact, and total clarity.

My response – Talent themes start the conversation.  The rest of the conversation is about understanding them, self-observing to see them at work, building on them, refining your understanding of them, and then repeating this process endlessly.  It is not a neat and clean project that ends with a deliverable.  In the end, someone tells you something like You are wise or You do a great job adapting to different situations.  In that is the inherent belief that You get yourself.

Self-awareness is a journey.  It is more about the work than the data.  Would you respond to an ad that claimed Receive total consciousness on your death bed for $74.99? (this is for Caddy Shack fans)

Feel free to buy more data, but you don’t need more data.  Do the work.

By Scott

My Top 4 Learning Tools

A thought was shared from Greg Hartle (@greghartle) last week about his impressions of people he meets that are in career transitions.

Many people are perfectly prepared for a world that no longer exists.

One area people struggle with is learning.  We wait for events, programs, our leader to direct us, a performance review, time away from our job to learn, or ___________(fill in the blank).  In a corporate class, experience shows me that 70% of people come to class without a clear objective.  In a personal study I have done, 100% of people who went to Google and typed in a “How do you . . . . ” search question had a clear learning objective.  Email me if you would like the full results of my study. 🙂

My favorite places to learn:

  • LinkedIn – I believe Greg’s perspective can be substantiated based on how someone leverages LinkedIn.  This tool is as much about setting up learning communities as it is about building a professional network.  Joining groups and asking/answering questions on a weekly basis.  This should be a cornerstone of your learning strategy.
  • Inc – I still get a paper copy.  It makes me old school, but the information I get from people trying things out is so valuable for me as an entrepreneur and an advisor to growing companies.  For a close friend it is Wired magazine.  I added that for 2013.  More to come . . .
  • TED – At the end of the day every TEDx video is still an event.  Given that, I am still shocked by how many people I work with that have never heard of this.
  • YouTube – 48 hours of new video is uploaded to YouTube every minute.  (see graphic) I once had a friend with a health issue that needed to start giving himself monthly shots.  He is a bit impatient, so after trying to find someone to help he went on YouTube, found instructions, and did it.  I do not recommend this course of action for everyone – but he is clearly not the person Greg was talking about.

As I watch my teenagers interact with the Internet I realize the line between living and learning is non-existent for them.   The mantra that separates boomers from a millennial is a simple shift from I will outwork you to I will out-learn you.  The hardest worker is not the automatic winner anymore.

What are your favorite places to learn?

By Scott

Good advice for new or old grads – Effective Immediately Post 1

I am in the process of reading/reviewing a book by Emily Bennington and Skip Lineberg called Effective Immediately – How to FIT IN, STAND OUT, and MOVE UP at Your First REAL JOB.  As I go through it I will share some thoughts that make me go Hmmmm . . .  This posting is based on one of those moments.

As I started through this book I found myself grinning at some of the helpful hints.  Not because they were funny (other than the statement – If someone farts, ignore it), but they were the kind of things that are simple, obvious, and too often lost in the shuffle of starting something new.

Advice I liked:

Under the heading Have Patience – a quote from Sir William Osler (a pioneer of modern medicine): The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today’s work superbly well. A great reminder not to get caught in the who is looking and what is the next project.  Just focus on what is in front of you.

Professional etiquette:  Listen more than you talk – Obvious, but how often do nerves translate to communication misses such as talking too much.  Remember that when someone talks about themselves it stimulates the brain in the same way as when someone is eating or receives money.  Get others talking about themselves and listen.

Professional etiquette:  Always clean up after yourself. This one makes me smile, because my first job was in a steel mill where nobody every cleaned up after lunch and expected the janitor to do it for them.  Then I worked for a company that had a cultural norm around this, and every place I have been since I still wipe down the counter in the coffee counter when I leave.  I watch for this habit.

Reality check: Traditional HR departments are either gone or spread thin.  Most new people do not really know the function of the HR department, so they will not miss them.  But this statement is true, and even more true for smaller organizations.  The book goes on to give a list of Macro and Micro items that could be used by anyone to do their own onboarding plan.  For example:  Macro item:  What are the key responsibilities of your job? and Micro item:  Who is your supervisor or boss you report to directly, and who do they report to?

So far I like it.  As with all business books I believe they need to be read with a partner or small groups.  This book is written in short sections that fits that model very well, and is a great reference tool because each short chapter equals a skill.

More to come . . . .

 

By Scott

1 on 1’s – Do you ask this question?

Shortly after publishing my last trU Tips on doing effective One-on-Ones (read it here), I received a note from a leader I respect.  I have never worked with him, but every time we talk he asks me questions that make me think.  He is also very willing to try new things.  He is a very valuable part of my network.

Let me call this trU Tips 22.1. In addition to the two questions I recommend once you mastered the basic One-on-one conversation, a third question to ask is – What should I keep doing the same?

Remember the goal of a One-on-One is to build trust and focus by creating space for your people to talk about what they are getting done, where they need help, and get a sense for how they are performing vs the standards you have set for them.  The advanced questions are about getting feedback for you that will help you continuously refine your own effectiveness as a leader.  Think of these three questions:

  • What do I need to do more of?
  • What should I keep doing the same? (the new question)
  • What do I need to do less of?

If you ask these questions and log in the answers over a 3-6 month period, I guarantee it will give you the same results as a professionally administered 360 feedback tool.  In financial terms, the choice is listen for free or spend five figures having someone else listen for you.

I love my network – they make me better.  I am listening.

By Scott

Make Good Decisions Dad

As I was preparing for a board meeting my 9 year old daughter asked me what I was doing.  She had just told me about her first student council meeting, so I told her about my meeting and that we were going to be approving a budget for the year.  She thought for a second and said in a very matter of fact tone, “Make good decisions Dad.”

Sometimes we forget the basics, and if we are listening there are reminders all around us about what those are.  We just need to stop, listen, understand, and reset our perspective.

Here was my reset based on the wisdom that she shared with me:

  • Goal of a leader:  Make sure the best decisions get made more than not.
  • Development goal #1 of a leader:  Continue to learn and grow so the definition of best for yourself and your team is always being redefined in a positive direction.
  • Development goal #2 for a leader:  Challenge your team to embrace the same goal.

Maybe a good goal today is lead with the eyes and heart of a 9 year old.

 

By Scott

4 Performance Words – What Seth said, and What I think

Seth Godin recently blogged about performance, and outlined four kinds:  Bad, Good, Remarkable, and Personal.  Here is the whole post.

In a world where we too often treat performance with labels like Right person/Right seat or A player / B player / C player – it is good to just use words that we all know.

Leading performance is about not walking by the work without letting people know what you see.  It is about getting their view of the work and what they see in others.  It about celebrating things being done, asking a few questions to plant seeds that might lead to a different view of the work, and challenging people to a different level of involvement and ownership.  Try these:

  • Where did you see passion in someone else’s work this week?  How can we celebrate that?
  • How did you personalize your work this week and who benefited from it?
  • What work do you have in front of you that has a chance to be remark-able in how you do it?  What will make it worthy of that label?

Of course you ask these questions, listen, and always revisit them.

Personally, I would drop Bad and Good in favor of Absent and Solid.

I like reading Seth – his thoughts are generally remark-able.

 

By Scott

Rule 3 – NEVER cancel without rescheduling

Enough said?  You can stop here if you get it.  If you need more convincing here are 451 more words to get some clarity.

In his book The Speed of Trust, Stephen M.R. Covey said We judge ourselves based on our intentions.  We judge others based on their actions. Never is that statement more true than in the relationship between a leader and follower.  Do any of these examples ring true?

1.  A leader cancels a one on one because of a customer issue.  Does not reschedule it because he/she just talked to the person as they walked around the office yesterday.

Leader intention:  Customer is critical and everything stops when they call.  Plus we just talked yesterday and you know I care about you.

Leader action (as interpreted by follower):  Here we go again.  Your issues always trump mine and this issue could have been handled by the field service team with just a little support from us.  This is the 6th time this has happened in the last 8.5678 months (slight exaggeration on the number – but do not be surprised at the human mind to keep a key measure like this).

2.  A leader has the one on one and interrupts the conversation three times because of calls from home.

Leader intention:  Apology issued before each call, and since it was his wife on all three occasions and it was an emergency it was okay because family comes first.  Family is a core value of our organization.  (Emergency = at the mechanic with their new Audi A8 and the repairs were not going well)

Leader action (as interpreted by follower):  Would it be okay if I did this?  His/her spouse is a great person, but can’t this wait 20 minutes?  Isn’t this my time?  I will just cut my time/agenda short and let them deal with their issues.  Afterthought – A8?  I wonder why my evaluation/increase is six months overdue?

3.  Leader leads the time with two things that went wrong last week and they want to know what happened and why.

Leader intention:  Accountability.  If we cannot have the hard conversations then I am not doing my job.

Leader action (as interpreted by follower):  What a jelly fish.  There have been four days to talk about these things since they happened, plus I owned them and fixed them.  What about the bad decision he/she made yesterday that kept me here until 8pm to fix?  Can there be accountability there?

Being a leader is tough.  It is tougher when priorities are not clear and the tyranny of the urgent rules over the one on one time.  Never break this rule – and if you do point back to the last date/time/location/reason that it happened so they know you are keeping score too. 🙂

Talent management is about great conversations.  Follow these three rules for one on ones and you can have some great conversations.

Links related to this post:

By Scott

Performance plan = Coaching? 2 Arguments for NO

This leader has been underperforming and we have put a plan together to guide their efforts to climb back to a level of performance that will allow him/her to stay.

Have you ever been part of this conversation?  Every been the individual talked about in this conversation?

Personally, I can answer yes to both of the above questions.  Drawing on that experience, I have learned to ask two questions when I enter as the coach/consultant:

  1. Why do you want to keep them?
  2. How bad do you want to keep them?

I ask these questions mainly to listen for words of duty or passion.  To help a leader get back to a better place takes hard work.  To have that resolve, passion always trumps duty.  Duty to try because it is the ‘right thing to do’ will fail.  If the real passion of the leader is to look compassionate, then duty is the driver. Passion for helping this individual find success somewhere in the organization because the organization/team needs them results in a different level of resolve.  It is that resolve that comes through in the difficult conversations, and people will feel that.

I also log what I hear because it will need to be shared with the individual on the plan.  They may not believe it, which is their choice, but they at least need to hear it.  Too often these positive/supportive comments are the first they have heard in a while.

Now to the point of this whole post – Should coaching and performance plan be used in the same sentence? My advice is No, and here are two reasons.

1. Coaching should be a reward: Everyone is watching AND listening. By using the word coach people are now making the connection between I am in trouble and Coaching.  The reality of performance plans is most result in either the person being let go or them leaving for another job.  It is the right thing to give them a chance, both for the individual and for the culture of the organization – just call any effort to help or hire help what it is – performance consultant, advisor, or management.  Connecting Coaching with Reward will get you a greater return on your investment.

2.  It is really more telling than coaching: Coaching is about helping the individual craft a desired future and then working with them to move towards it.  Once a performance plan happens the panic button has been hit and the goal of the of individual is survival – whether that is leaving or doing whatever is on the list.  In this state, people need direction, will likely agree to anything, and will hide the most important information – which is how they are feeling.  Trust and truth is hard to share after the panic button is hit, and any talent management process without these is painful.

Talent management is about great conversations that lead to a higher level of performance.  Coaching can be a great tool for helping achieve this end, and the term should be reserved for people/situations where moving past good to excellent is the performance goal.

What is your experience?